Yang, O’Rourke dangerously wrong on decriminalizing opioids (opinion)

Election 2020: Democratic presidential debate in Houston

Drugs for everyone! (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)AP

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. – Do Democratic presidential candidates Andrew Yang and Beto O’Rourke know that we have an opioid crisis going on out there?

You have to wonder, after both men said during the Democratic debate on Tuesday night that they support decriminalizing small amounts of opioids.

Yang said that heroin should be included the decriminalization effort, and that safe injection sites and safe consumption sites should be made available to addicts.


Here’s what Yang said, according to a transcript of the debate: “So we need to decriminalize opiates for personal use. We have to let the country know this is not a personal failing. This was a systemic government failing. And then we need to open up safe consumption and safe injection sites around the country, because they save lives.”

O’Rourke agreed that decriminalization opioids was part of the solution to the drug scourge. He also wants the federal government to legalize marijuana.

Both men have mentioned their drug stances in their campaigns before, so this is not news. But to hear them talk about it during a debate was startling.

First things first: The Democrats, including Yang and O’Rourke, are right to say that we have to continue to go after the pharmaceutical companies that profited obscenely from the opioid crisis, a crisis that the companies themselves created and perpetrated in the name of making money.

They knew their product was highly addictive, yet they actively downplayed that fact. They knew their product was killing Americans by the score. And yet they continued to encourage doctors and others to prescribe opioids for everything from major surgery to root canal. There’s no way of telling how many people got hooked simply by filling that first prescription. Each one of those prescription slips was a ticking time bomb of addiction and death.

So Yang wasn’t wrong when he said during the debate, “we have to recognize this is a disease of capitalism run amok.”

He said, “So if the government turned a blind eye to this company spreading a plague among its people, then the least we can do is put the resources to work in our community so our people have a fighting chance to get well, even though this is not a money problem. We all know this is a human problem.”

He’s right, up to a point. We need treatment options for addicts. If somebody want to get clean, they must have the opportunity.

But that’s a far cry from just allowing people to keep using opioids as they see fit, from making opioids readily available to all who want them, without the user having any fear of penalty. Decriminalization is as good as legalization for recreational use.

The fact that we know that users keep using even after overdosing and being saved by naloxone multiple times should give you an indication of the carnage that communities would see if we in effect encouraged people to use opioids for fun. Are Yang and O’Rourke out of their minds? I can’t think of a bigger Pandora’s box to open. Haven’t we seen enough human wreckage as it is?

And how would Yang go about siting his consumption and injection sites? There’s no community that would welcome such a facility into its midst.

Safe injection sites may save lives, as Yang says, but do they help people get clean and stay clean? The jury’s very much out on that. And the neighborhoods surrounding the injection sites can be magnets for drug dealers. After all, they know where the addicts are.

None of this is to say that every user caught with a bag of dope should be thrown in jail. There are plenty of treatment options available in the criminal justice system, including here on Staten Island. We can already treat addicts with mercy while actively discouraging their further drug use.

But there has to be a limit, and the fear of incarceration has to be out there somewhere. Decriminalization is surrender.